Windows 8: A Design Disaster

[ianken]

Not only did someone at Microsoft think that it was a good idea to make Metro the primary user interface in Windows 8, but they also decided to destroy the ‘classic’ user interface experience too by also ‘Ribbonizing’ most of the applications.

That someone is Julie Larson-Green. The brains behind the Office ribbon. Windows is now stuffed at the top with former Office team drones, since that's where Sinofsky came from.

That's also why the media story is Win8 is such total shit. All they care about is email and facebooking your skydrive bing exhange one note sharepoint cloud doodle. Or whatever passionless office wankers care about.

 

[Naed]

What makes you think I haven't? The reason I used obscured program names in my example above is because it's an example of a program I rarely use that I would have to find - and remember the name of - in Start Menu. I'm well aware of the Start Menu search feature and I do use it.

Your comment read to me like you didnt, if i was wrong, my mistake.

 

[PornoSatan]

That someone is Julie Larson-Green. The brains behind the Office ribbon. Windows is now stuffed at the top with former Office team drones, since that's where Sinofsky came from.

That's also why the media story is Win8 is such total shit. All they care about is email and facebooking your skydrive bing exhange one note sharepoint cloud doodle. Or whatever passionless office wankers care about.

ROFL

 

[heatlesssun]

The thing that most of you are missing is that Windows 8 is going to be tied with a new generation of hardware that has touch built in. We can go on and on about how horrible Metro is for desktops and keyboards and mice. If one can get past the differences desktop programs still work like they always have. I've spent a lot of time on a Windows 8 dual screen keyboard and mouse only desktop working with Visual Studio and it's just not that different from using Windows 7.

 

[SkribbelKat]

The thing that most of you are missing is that Windows 8 is going to be tied with a new generation of hardware that has touch built in. We can go on and on about how horrible Metro is for desktops and keyboards and mice. If one can get past the differences desktop programs still work like they always have. I've spent a lot of time on a Windows 8 dual screen keyboard and mouse only desktop working with Visual Studio and it's just not that different from using Windows 7.

I had a feeling you'd eventually show up. You're like a shark attracted to blood in the water.

 

[heatlesssun]

That someone is Julie Larson-Green. The brains behind the Office ribbon. Windows is now stuffed at the top with former Office team drones, since that's where Sinofsky came from.

That's also why the media story is Win8 is such total shit. All they care about is email and facebooking your skydrive bing exhange one note sharepoint cloud doodle. Or whatever passionless office wankers care about.

But the ribbon in Office wasn't well received by all of the passionate online know UIs better than Microsoft and Office has never sold better.

 

[wonderfield]

"Passionate online know UIs"?

 

[Azhar]

Your comment read to me like you didnt, if i was wrong, my mistake.

Understandable, but that's the selling point of Windows 8 - pin your frequently used programs on the Start Menu and go crazy with it. It looks cool and snazzy. The lesser used programs can stay in the garbage pile that is All Apps. Programs you never need or see maybe once or twice in your computing lifetime.

For me, I do it this way: my favorite apps get pinned to taskbar just like in Windows 7 - Internet Explorer, Chrome, Steam client, Outlook, Windows Media Player. My "second most" favorite programs go in Start Menu - command prompt, control panel, remote desktop connection, Imgburn, Excel,Word - things I don't use ALL the time, but I use a lot. And everything else in All Apps.

It's just the few rare times I go into All Apps, I become overwhelmed BECAUSE I'm not in there much. I feel like I have to relearn where the hell things are when I go in there when I cannot remember a program name. It's BECAUSE people don't do in All Apps much, they need to clean it up some more. Larger and bold fonts on main app names and smaller fonts for its contents. Different color fonts for every other apps folder and contents perhaps to keep them from looking like they're smashed together.

 

[PornoSatan]

Was trying to decode that one myself. Thought my reading was messed up

 

[heatlesssun]

I had a feeling you'd eventually show up. You're like a shark attracted to blood in the water.

I simply find this an interesting discussion because I've never seen such outrage over something that works so well for me. But I use Windows on a lot more form factors than most. From that perspective Windows 8 makes a lot sense and works better than most understand I think.

 

[Tudz]

The thing that most of you are missing is that Windows 8 is going to be tied with a new generation of hardware that has touch built in.

How can we possibly miss it when you post it several times in every single W8 thread

No one misses or forgets the point W8 will be tied to touch devices or that Metro is a touch orientated UI and platform. It also is not central to the vast majority of complaints regarding W8.

 

[nOrVow]

But the ribbon in Office wasn't well received by all of the passionate online know UIs better than Microsoft and Office has never sold better.

Make metro an OPTION, and we would ALL shutup. It isn't a hard feature to implement.

 

[XamediX]

I don't really see an overwhelming majority of hate for Win8, just a really really really vocal minority trying it's hardest to seem major. I tried the latest release of Windows 8 and I like it.

There is one fundamental issue that a very small amount of people hit on in this thread. It does seem that the Metro UI and the Desktop isn't perfectly merged together and seems kinda bolted on. I get that. It's not a deal breaker for me or make things harder for me.

It's new, very new, so I am re-learning how to do things in Windows. This is fine, I had to do the same for Windows 7, just on a smaller scale. I just can't believe all the people here who've become UI experts that have polled millions of people's feelings on Metro and talk as if their opinion IS public opinion. If I was to trust some random nobody on the internet and Microsoft opinion on how UI should go... I'm going to trust the company that has 90%+ market share in their industry.

At the end of the day people will complain. That's what people do, complain. Whether it's MS's new UI direction, anything Apple does, Steve's choice of FP posts, lack of apples-to-apples testing, anything facebook or social for that matter, people will find a reason to complain.

US, the quiet majority will just enjoy our products/services and cause ourselves pain but clicking on troll bait news posts and reading the "comments/opinions" posted. Even though we know we shouldn't, we will anyway.

In summary, stay with windows 7 and be happy for the windows 8 users that enjoy the experience. Problem solved.

 

[XamediX]

Make metro an OPTION, and we would ALL shutup. It isn't a hard feature to implement.

The community will find a way to do that for you. I've had to mod much more difficult things in my windows xp/98/2000 installs to get things to look the way I want. I'm 100% confident that a way to always boot into the desktop app and not use Metro at all will be available soon after launch unofficially. I mean anyone remember the hacked uxtheme.dll files we had to use to get really cool looking theme support for XP?

 

[MisterHipster]

I can see this thread going differently than the ton of other ones where people use the same arguments for 8+ pages of posts that change nobody's opinion.

^This.

 

[Q1DM6]

They're going about it in an odd way, having two disjointed UIs in Windows 8 and all.

 

[heatlesssun]

Make metro an OPTION, and we would ALL shutup. It isn't a hard feature to implement.

This causes as many problems as it solves.

 

[wonderfield]

I just can't believe all the people here who've become UI experts...

I really do hate that. No one here, to my knowledge, has claimed to be a "UI expert".

 

[Cobalt35]

I just can’t shake the feeling that Windows 8 would be better off as two separate operating systems. A ‘classic’ Windows 8 for regular desktop and notebook systems - which would feel more like a service pack for Windows 7 than a full release — and a separate ‘Metro’ version for touch-enabled hardware.

^This 100%....
I had the same exact feeling 5min after installing Win8 preview on my laptop.....

Yep, I'm 100% on that too. I do think it's a design disaster and I hope it explodes in their face... as all things should when companies ignore their customers wants.

 

[PornoSatan]

This causes as many problems as it solves.

Not really, it's a solution to many of the complaints.

 

[Tudz]

Yep, I'm 100% on that too. I do think it's a design disaster and I hope it explodes in their face... as all things should when companies ignore their customers wants.

Yeah, I pretty much agree. I know Windows has always been about 1 UI and only 1 UI regardless of input devices, but at the same time that focus has always been on mouse+KB because that was the target device. Now if they want to target 2 different inputs, they really should implement 2 different UIs for it. This whole thing of having Metro AND regular Desktop but you still have to go through Metro to launch desktop apps and having separate metro and desktop versions of the same program on the same device all seems pretty moronic to me. Just create 2 separate UIs and keep them separate, they've already created 2 UIs, now they just need to separate them instead of trying to mash them together like an elephant trying to have sex with a fish.

 

[Teenk9]

I don't get all the "this is not a business UI" talk. Why not? How many average non-tech related office workers actually use more than five or six applications? Or more than ten? I actually see this working out for the best. Pin the applications or suites that the employees use most often as metro tiles and they're all set. I would love to do this with my co-workers' computers.

 

[Acer_Sheep]

Win 8 sux but why they are comparing it to vista, vista did have performance and compatibility problems but the changes made to windows XP interface were very much awesome.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I swear...no one reads...anything.

Article TLR

• Talks about Win 8 in a NON TOUCH environment..ie. desktop/laptop.
• Acknowledges that Win 8 on a touch device is an entirely different experience and is Not debating its value on that.

Yet we manage to have the "But but, New hardware!" argument.."you haven't tried it on touch" and all the other inane arguments that completely ignore the fact that the article was not talking about Touch devices but about the experience on non touch devices.

Momentum is already building against metro on a non touch device and yet some continue to ignore the writing on the wall. Will windows 8 be successful in the tablet/touch landscape? Possibly, it all depends on how well hardware and the App market competes with Apple/Android. Will it be successful outside of that? Extremely unlikely. Simply put there are few compelling reasons to choose it over Win7 and a slew of reasons not to.

Let me make a point extremely clear. Windows 8 will succeed or fail in the first 6 to 12 months. That is the period of time it will take joe public to form an opinion on a large enough scale that momentum of that opinion will be unstoppable. The new hardware that people keep clamoring about won't be available for a minimum of 12 months after the release. Sorry but anyone who thinks hardware gets developed around unfinished software, doesn't know much about how hardware design cycles work. Just because there are windows 8 tablets around the corner, doesn't mean the hardware is optimized for it. The first generation of hardware on a new software platform is always crap, the second generation is still largely crap. It isn't until around the third generation that things really start to get rock solid and win 8 doesn't have that long.

Sorry to be a complete killjoy, but Win 8 succeeding is at best a long shot.

I am looking forward to Win 9 though as a result. Ribbon + Win 7 Aero and no metro garbage? Winner Winner chicken dinner!

 

[ir0nw0lf]

I don't know if I would go as far as calling Windows 8 a "design disaster."

Design disaster is putting it very very mildly. Literally every single person I know who has come into my shop and seen it on a demo box and/or tried the public release has said in some form or fashion that the Metro UI sucks donkey nutz. As soon as I show them the old desktop side, they breath a huge sigh of relief.

I'm not going to be touching this for some time after it comes out, still sick to my stomach from seeing the UI earlier today.

 

[heatlesssun]

Yet we manage to have the "But but, New hardware!" argument.."you haven't tried it on touch" and all the other inane arguments that completely ignore the fact that the article was not talking about Touch devices but about the experience on non touch devices.

The thing is that you're looking as things as touch and non-touch. Windows 8 looks at as you whatever input method and programs you want to use.

Momentum is already building against metro on a non touch device and yet some continue to ignore the writing on the wall. Will windows 8 be successful in the tablet/touch landscape? Possibly, it all depends on how well hardware and the App market competes with Apple/Android. Will it be successful outside of that? Extremely unlikely. Simply put there are few compelling reasons to choose it over Win7 and a slew of reasons not to.

You mention the app market and there's going to be some number of Metro apps that people will like on any device.

Let me make a point extremely clear. Windows 8 will succeed or fail in the first 6 to 12 months. That is the period of time it will take joe public to form an opinion on a large enough scale that momentum of that opinion will be unstoppable.

Succeed or fail, Windows 8 will sell hundreds of millions of copies over its lifetime. That's the important thing because it all but guarantees a huge Metro app market. This debate about the UI will wage on but as new devices and apps come online the UI argument becomes less relevant.

 

[daglesj]

You mention the app market and there's going to be some number of Metro apps that people will like on any device.

But this is the only reason why MS has stuck it on the dekstop. They just want to sell crappy apps for $1 a time. Is anyone craving for fart apps on the desktop?

It's not about making our gear easier to use. It's about making money selling crap.

 

[wonderfield]

The thing is that you're looking [at] things as touch and non-touch. Windows 8 looks at [it] as you [use] whatever input method and programs you want to use.

What Windows 8 sees does not concern me so terribly.

Are you inking these posts, by the way? Is that why they're so full of errors?

 

[Geforcepat]

All the "Oh it's another Vista!" is such bullcrap.

The only problems with Vista was that it needed another 3-4 months in the oven, the hardware manufacturers were too lazy to write drivers for it and the retailers just filled the new machines with bloatware designed for XP.

If you install a fresh Vista SP2 build on a machine it works just as smooth as 7 in 99.99% of cases.

This.

 

[heatlesssun]

But this is the only reason why MS has stuck it on the dekstop. They just want to sell crappy apps for $1 a time. Is anyone craving for fart apps on the desktop?

It's not about making our gear easier to use. It's about making money selling crap.

Metro apps can be very powerful and complex and do the vast majority of what desktop apps do today and not look 20 years old as well. Is Microsoft trying to generate a new revenue stream, sure, but people are crazy about apps on their phones, and they actually have been buying software for their PCs for ages. A Windows app store just makes sense from the standpoint that people seem too like the idea.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

This is kind of the same way I feel about the Ribbon interface in Office.

Before you could scroll down a list of menus and find something quickly. Now it's a matter of hunting a disorganized ribbon playing "where's waldo" (or where's "goal seek" in this case). that is not an improvement.

At first I thought it was just a matter of getting used to the ribbon, but even after using Office 2010 exclusively for about six months now, I still find the "where's waldo" effect slowing me down.

That's not to say I haven't become more comfortable with it over time (I have) but the truth is that lists of text in a straight line that your eyes can easily follow top to bottom are always going to be more efficient than a bunch of icons or text spread out over a bar.

Dear flipping BOB! I agree with this several infinity percent, and have been saying mostly the same thing since Win2007 was first demoed.

Not quite sure why Microsoft keeps trying to dumb up the interface (it's not dumbing "down" if it requires MORE effort to find things now). But I wish like hell they'd stop and burn whoever's driving this idiocy at the stake.

 

[NKD]

One thing I absolutely hate, I mean absolutely with a passion is Microsoft totally abandoning the Start button. Oh boy, what were they thinking? The first beta I tried, I actually liked that I could switch between the two and I thought it was actually fun. I still like how fast the OS is but I don't think my dad or mom or anyone in my family will like it. I think microsoft will succeed in tablet front but fail in desktop front because they decided to take away the even the option from a user to run the traditional desktop on it. Yea I know about those plugins that enable the start button, but it is not the same.

I was excited to switch back and forth and trying out the slick interface but the article is correct in a sense that if you have too many apps you are going to go app hunting on your desktop.

 

[nOrVow]

One thing I absolutely hate, I mean absolutely with a passion is Microsoft totally abandoning the Start button. Oh boy, what were they thinking? The first beta I tried, I actually liked that I could switch between the two and I thought it was actually fun. I still like how fast the OS is but I don't think my dad or mom or anyone in my family will like it. I think microsoft will succeed in tablet front but fail in desktop front because they decided to take away the even the option from a user to run the traditional desktop on it. Yea I know about those plugins that enable the start button, but it is not the same.

I was excited to switch back and forth and trying out the slick interface but the article is correct in a sense that if you have too many apps you are going to go app hunting on your desktop.

Agreed. The start button is huge, imo. That was their hallmark visual cue that included all of the OS complexities and made it easily accessible - it hid virtually nothing from the end user.

 

[NKD]

What I think is microsoft should have made the traditional desktop the primary interface on PC and Metro the primary interface on the Tablets. They however forced Metro on PC, I never understood why, Metro should be a fun interface to launch market place and apps, not primary interface for average Joe. I would love Metro on Tablet but I prefer the regular desktop on PC with metro as an option to play around with.

 

[Yawnald]

I'll be voting with my wallet on this one. As long as metro is forced on me, MS wont see another penny from me. 6 desktops, 2 media centers, and 2 laptops. Thats at a bare minimum a cool $1000 theyll be missing. Im glad to see people as disgusted with it as I am.

 

[NKD]

I have no doubt that the windows 8 tablets will take off like crazy and will probably take over the market in next decade or so. Metro is just damn beautiful on tablet. Microsoft tried to force metro on everyone by taking away the start button. That was just a slap in the face and telling the consumer to take it up the ass.

 

[pelo]

What I think is microsoft should have made the traditional desktop the primary interface on PC and Metro the primary interface on the Tablets. They however forced Metro on PC, I never understood why, Metro should be a fun interface to launch market place and apps, not primary interface for average Joe. I would love Metro on Tablet but I prefer the regular desktop on PC with metro as an option to play around with.

Without Metro win8 is essentially a carbon copy of win7 but with a service pack. They can't strip away the option otherwise people won't upgrade -- granted they won't upgrade anyway but that's beside the point. The only thing MS can do is make Metro look more appealing and hope that it picks up.

I have a feeling this is going to be worse than Vista and ME. ARM-powered device that's ~$85 more expensive than others while running equal hardware to Android/iOS and a weaker app store.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Is anyone craving for fart apps on the desktop?

I am. But, I'm a kid (plus a few decades).

I've voiced my complaints on Metro, and I've been proven wrong a few times. But, my biggest complaint is the 2 UI's. I understand WHY, I just don't really know about the implementation. Not quite sold on that part yet. I know I can launch things from Metro, but I have icons on the desktop. I don't know about switching from one to the other to find something or a certain setting or feature. It should be seamless, but it's not. Not for me, anyway.

Other than that, I love it. My kids love it. This is all on a desktop and laptop, too. Tablet should be much better with Metro, of course.

 

[daglesj]

I have a feeling this is going to be worse than Vista and ME. ARM-powered device that's ~$85 more expensive than others while running equal hardware to Android/iOS and a weaker app store.

Come xmas MS will be trying to sell Win8 tablets against dual core IPS Android tablets for $200.

Hmmmm.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Without Metro win8 is essentially a carbon copy of win7 but with a service pack. They can't strip away the option otherwise people won't upgrade -- granted they won't upgrade anyway but that's beside the point. The only thing MS can do is make Metro look more appealing and hope that it picks up.

Quite a bit more than that, really. A lot of cool features, and some that I'm still being introduced to.